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I am appalled by the outrageous and old-fashioned
in-your-face racism, inflammatory rhetoric, and visible acts
of hate that divide and polarize people.
Yet, I am equally outraged
by the “killing me softly” smiley-faced discrimination that
is often concealed within policies and practices that
negatively impact the poor, people of color or women.
There are at least two
local policy issues that we should be concerned about.
The first addresses the
gender-based pay gap, whereby several studies show that
women, on average, are paid 83 cents per every dollar paid
to men. For black women, the disparity is even greater.
Black women are paid only 65 percent of the pay received by
white men performing nearly identical work and having
similar education.
In dollar terms that means
that women bring home $3.27 less per hour than men. Over a
lifetime, the data shows that women are shorted $530,000
over their lifetime and nearly $800,000 if they are
college-educated.
With 20 percent of Toledo
households headed by women, and more than 15 million
women-headed households nationally, (29 percent of which
fall below the poverty line), the collateral consequences
from this unfairness will negatively impact all of us.
The response?
Councilpersons Nick
Komives and Yvonne Harper, a self-professed victim of wage
discrimination herself, have co-sponsored the Pay Equity
Act, legislation that bars employers from asking prospective
employees about their salary history.
“All too often, employers
will base an incoming person’s salary on their previous
salary and we know that many of them might have come in
lower than what they were even worth in their previous job,
so there’s no reason for that to continue to hold them back,
and essentially, what we’re going to be asking is that
employers pay people what the job is worth,” says Komives.
Similar legislation has
overwhelmingly passed in Cincinnati.
“The only people that came
out in opposition (in Cincinnati), which is what I
anticipate here as well, was the Cincinnati Regional Chamber
of Commerce, but interestingly, every single minority or
other Chamber of Commerce including the LGBT Chamber of
Commerce, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the African
American Chamber of Commerce, all of those other sub Chamber
of Commerces in Cincinnati were all in favor of it,” Komives
adds.
The second potential discriminatory policy area is the
request for the Kapszukiewicz
administration to eliminate the longstanding policy of free
downtown parking from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and replace it with
all-day paid meter parking.
If implemented, the policy
will disproportionately burden poor and people of color who
are over represented in the criminal justice and social
service systems and also those who transact personal
business or access governmental offices in the downtown
area.
I understand the business
community’s desire for economic prosperity and to make
downtown restaurants a lunchtime destination. However, the
constant feeding $2.00 into parking meters is a challenge
for many.
And, “what scares me,” a
concerned friend recently said to me, “is that they’re gonna
start aggressively enforcing the expired meters.” Those who
visit downtown may find that the courts are not likely to
respect meter time and “if you ain’t done (with your case),
you can’t refresh that meter, you’ve got to move your car,
you can only get two hours.”
The first parking ticket,
I believe, costs $10. After the sixth ticket the fine rises
to $30 and increases to $50 with the 10th ticket. For those
who don’t have the means to pay, the “penalties for poverty”
add up for those most likely to “get caught in the system.”
After getting too many tickets, a block is placed on their
driver’s license and then can spiral to another charge for
driving on a suspended or expired license as a result of
trying to get to a job that pays them less than it pays
others.
The audacious Komives/Harper
policy response to the subtle but harmful economic
discrimination in Toledo is also supported by Advocates for
Basic Legal Equality (ABLE); Equality Toledo; NAACP; The
Museum of Art; United Pastors for Social Empowerment, and
several labor unions.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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